Two years after devastating bushfires donated funds remain unspent

The country’s largest wildlife rehabilitation charity, the NSW Wildlife Rescue and Education Service, better known as WIRES, has yet to spend most of the $100 million in donations it raised after the Black Summer fires two years ago.

Financial documents filed in January show WIRES received donations of $102,478,085, including $90,432,238 raised for a bushfire emergency fund, in the combined financial years of 2020 and 2021.

A kangaroo licks its burnt limbs after escaping from the Liberation Trail fire in November 2019.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Since receiving the donations, it disbursed $16,851,624 to WIRES Incorporated, the charity’s corporate arm, which has spent the money on ongoing operations, as well as projects related to the bushfires.

At the end of the 2021 financial year, the fund was sitting on a balance of $87,226,248, just over $1.5 million less than it held in mid-2020.

Dr Bree Talbot treating a koala joey at the non-profit Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital.

The post-bushfire donations were a massive windfall for the charity, which raised about $2.5 million the year before the fires.

The organisation’s treasurer, Brett Anderson, resigned at an annual general meeting in October. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have been told he left in part due to frustration at the management of the emergency fund. He declined to comment.

WIRES chief executive Leanne Taylor, in a statement to the Herald and The Age, said the emergency fund was created to respond not only to the fires but “compounded disasters” of the drought, fires and extreme weather.

“To set the context, it is only 24 months since the peak of the Black Summer fires and when WIRES received extensive global support to respond to the short- and long-term impacts of the catastrophic fire season,” she said.

“It should be noted that WIRES was only ever a NSW wildlife rescue organisation; however, as custodians of these unprecedented donations, we made a commitment in January 2020 that we would provide support to the wildlife sector nationally, which we have done and are continuing to do.

“We also communicated that the donations would be used on both short-term emergency response and long-term recovery plans and our actions and intent has not wavered.”

The mobile Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital.

She noted that the financial reports show that, by the end of the last calendar year, $13,087,897 had been disbursed and a further $12,264,108 in spending had been approved.

A review of three charities that raised significant funds after the fires, conducted by the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission in 2020, found that WIRES was spending its windfall on bushfire-related activities and was “planning for the long-term distribution of funds on a range of activities in line with its charitable purposes”.

But Stephen Van Mil, a vet and chief executive of the Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital said he believed donors from around the world would be disappointed to learn that WIRES had spent so little of the money it raised on the disaster, which the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates killed 3 billion Australian animals.

Dr Van Mil founded the hospital – a mobile full-service veterinary hospital – with $1.5 million in donations after the fires. It has treated about 2000 animals so far.

He said he was frustrated that WIRES had refused to contribute to the hospital’s costs, despite the fact that more than half the animals it treats are brought to it by WIRES.

“No one owns wildlife – we provide all our services for free, and knowing that a major wildlife organisation has a huge amount of funds and won’t support us in our care for wildlife is a deep concern,” he said.

Dr Van Mil said he believes he could have built a second mobile vet hospital with the money WIRES has accrued in interest from its donations.

He said he was concerned that, since the fires, WIRES had spent almost $1.5 million in outside consultancy fees.

Ms Taylor said she understood that some applicants who did not receive funding were disappointed and that WIRES had spent $1.3 million on an external provider for a 24-hour animal assistance hotline.

A leader of a related charity said he was concerned wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts across Australia were poorly co-ordinated and disorganised. The “once in a lifetime” surge of funds donated after the fires could be used to revolutionise the sector, but it appeared WIRES is incapable of the task, he said.

A report commissioned by the Australian Veterinary Association found Australian vets do about $35.5 million a year of pro bono work on injured wildlife, and that the workload increases with natural disasters.

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